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WASCAL (West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use). Work Package 5.1 Risk Assessment and Analysis
Project
Project code: keine Angabe
Contract period: 01.10.2012
- 30.04.2016
Purpose of research: Inventory & Assessment
The 4th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicated that climate-related hazards worldwide will manifest themselves in higher frequencies and magnitudes in the coming decades. These climate change-related hazards will potentially have serious negative impacts for communities and ecosystems in Africa which has been identified as one of the most vulnerable regions of the world, where current adaptation to climate variability may prove insufficient for future changes in climate. Impacts on the agricultural sector and on water resources in particular will have negative repercussions in a region where a majority of the population relies largely on ecosystems. The World Development Report of the World Bank estimated that in the absence of adequate adaptation, these impacts will reduce land available for agriculture, reduce crop yields, increase poverty and increase the risks of food insecurity.
As a precautionary principle, it is therefore important to understand the coping and adaptation strategies that could be available to rural communities and to provide means to reinforce them in view of the predicted effects of climate change in the region. This WP aims at developing the tools necessary for multi-hazard vulnerability, resilience and risk assessment in order to facilitate decision making for re-enforcing the coping capacities and adaptation options of SES exposed to climate change-aggravated environmental hazards.
The WP will contribute to the generation of new knowledge in many ways. First, by having as its unit of analysis coupled SES which will require the use of specific approaches and methodologies that enable capturing the complexity of such systems, including all the feedback loops operating at multiple scales. Second, by considering a multi-risk approach that will combine the adaptation of existing vulnerability, resilience and risk assessment frameworks on the one hand and the use of novel approaches for the development of indicators used for spatial representation of multi-risks on the other hand. Third, by improving existing approaches for the quantification of resilience thresholds, the latter often being discussed in the scientific literature but being rarely measured.
The new knowledge generated in this WP, including the spatially-differentiated risk profiles, will be upscalable, policy-relevant and usable by decision makers towards the end of the implementation phase of the project. It will therefore be a key goal of the WP to work in close partnership with the WASCAL Competence Center and the research activities will be conducted jointly with research and academic institutions in West Africa. This will ensure the long term sustainability of research approaches and outcomes generated through this WP.
Section overview
Subjects
- Climate Change
Collaborative Project
WASCAL (West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use) Research Program
Framework programme
BMBF - FONA (Research for Sustainable Development) - Research Framework Programme for Sustainability
Funding programme
Excutive institution
United Nations University - Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS)
